


Out of Elsinore

by Lexigent



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 19:44:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21287174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/pseuds/Lexigent
Summary: Modern AU. Ophelia and Horatio both love Hamlet dearly, but there comes a point where both of then have had enough.
Relationships: Horatio & Ophelia
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Stage of Fools 2019





	Out of Elsinore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Small_Hobbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Small_Hobbit/gifts).

Ophelia fled Hamlet's room with a mixture of amusement, fear, and anger. 

It wasn't that she didn't understand that grief could make you act strangely. She'd lost her mother at age ten and she could absolutely empathise with that.  
No, it was the way he dialled it up to eleven any time he wanted attention - from her, or from anyone. She'd seen him pull the same thing on his weird friend who hung around the place likely because he didn't have anywhere else to go - or so she'd thought, were it not for the way he looked at Hamlet sometimes. Ophelia knew what unrequited feelings looked like and Horatio was a textbook case.  
And it was the way he only saw his own feelings and not anyone's own. He hadn't bothered to speak to his mother once - he just assumed a lot of things about her relationship with Claudius, and he ranted to Ophelia about it.   
He hadn't asked her how she felt about his father's death, about Hamlet being shoved out of the line of succession. He was so wrapped up in his own grief that it wouldn't have mattered anyhow.

She felt her body connect with someone else's and looked up while instantly taking a step back. "I'm so sorry. I was miles away."

"No worries." The person he'd run into was Horatio, presumably on his way to Hamlet's room. 

"Not sure you wanna go in there, mate," she said casually. Horatio stopped and turned. "Has he - Did he - hurt you?"

"Not physically," Ophelia replied. Horatio frowned. "You're the psychology student," she added, "you put it together."

Horatio rested his palm against his face and looked at her through his fingers, then closed his eyes. "Mood," she said. He nodded. "Look," he added, "do you want to, I don't know, sit down somewhere and talk?"

Yes, she wanted that. Very much. She walked Horatio over to their house, just next to the Denmarks' mansion, and let him into their kitchen.

"There's something you should probably know about Hamlet," he began after the first sip of his coffee, his hands shaking so much he nearly spilled it all over himself. Ophelia put her hands under her chin theatrically and then sat and listened, feeling her eyes widen as she did so, because what Horatio was saying finally helped her make sense of Hamlet's behaviour.

"So you're the only one in the place who knows he's faking it?" she said.

"Far as I know," he replied.

"He told you. But he didn't tell me." And when he didn't react to that, "He told you. But not me. His supposed girlfriend. The woman he supposedly loves."

Horatio's face looked pained. She looked at him in silence for a long time. It puzzled her how someone who was clearly as smart as Horatio was could support a plan as nonsensical as Hamlet's. Where even was the plan in acting mentally ill because your mum married your uncle after your dad's untimely death? If the end goal was to get everyone's attention, surely there were better ways? Or was it just about getting his mum to care? Which, again, there were better ways.

But then again, of course she knew the reason Horatio supported Hamlet's plan.

"He's not worth it," she said and surprised herself with how cold her words sounded. Horatio nodded and sighed. "Not that I'm any better than you," she added, "I mean, if you knew half of what I've put up with from him..." Horatio's eyes brightened at this and Ophelia found that she wanted to talk to him about what had been going on, partly because he was there but also, to a much larger proportion, because she felt he would understand.

***

He was there again two days later, when she was crying over her phone so much the screen didn't react properly to her fingers, trying to get hold of her brother after Hamlet had done something unspeakable to her father. She let him in and he sat on the edge of her bed with her, and at some point, because of how much she was crying, he let her lie with her head in his lap, gently stroking her hair and saying no words whatsoever, because there weren't any that could make this better. It should have been her brother comforting her like this, but he was in Paris and she was damned if she wanted him to get involved in this. She knew how impulsive he could be, and that his first impulse would be towards protecting her. In the end she texted him what had happened and urged him to stay put where he was.

In a moment between overwhelming tears and grief, the thought formed in her head that he had sought her out instead of trying to protect Hamlet or going along with his supposed "plan" anymore. There were lines never to be crossed, even for someone so in love with Hamlet as Horatio had been.

"Do you want to get out of this place?" he asked her when she stopped shaking, and she instantly tipped over into hysterical laughter. "How is that even a question?" she replied, and he conceded that that was a fair response.

She knew she would have to come back to bury her father, to sort whatever it was that you sorted when your parent died, but there would be time for that. Right now, Horatio was booking trains on his phone and she was throwing clothes into a suitcase and texting her brother the address of the backpacker hostel she'd be staying at once she reached Paris.

A couple of hours later, they were on the train. Ophelia leaned her head against Horatio's shoulder more as an automatic reaction than anything else, then caught herself and stammered something about not wanting to make assumptions. 

Horatio looked at her and gently replaced her head and stroking the side of her face. Ophelia found she liked the comfort, the solid presence next to her. I can see why Hamlet liked him around, she thought, and smiled through her tears. But I like him around too, was her next thought. And as the train pulled out of the station, she reached for his hand.

It would take time, for both of them, to step out of his shadow, but as she felt Horatio's hand gently cradle her own, and the train start to move, every second now taking them further away from the Denmarks, from Elsinore, and from Hamlet, Ophelia felt confident that they'd be able to reclaim the pieces of their hearts and souls that Hamlet had claimed for himself.

She smiled at the thought and pressed a kiss to Horatio's knuckles as the train sped them along on their journey and on their way - to rearrange their stories outside of being supporting cast in Hamlet's drama and to begin something else, somewhere else, that was theirs and theirs alone.


End file.
